When sharing electronic documents in a networked environment, whether the unsecured Internet or a private intranet, it may be desirable to allow a document creator to share the document with only a select group of other users or devices. Such security may be particularly desirable when the electronic document contains private or sensitive information. Several methods exist to verify the identity of a user attempting to gain access to a share electronic document, such as username and password combinations, and public/private key combinations.
With this variety of security methods, it is often cumbersome for the creator or manager of an electronic document to maintain security credentials and/or communicate the necessary credentials to those users that require access to the electronic document. Further, certain users, such as system administrators, may have access to all documents stored in a centralized document repository. Such depositories are often used in sharing electronic documents, and the access required by certain users to maintain the technical environment may also be used to inappropriately access the documents stored within that environment.
As more and more electronic documents are stored remotely and access to that data through various services becomes increasingly important, it will become correspondingly important to protect the content of those documents and allow access only to those that the author desires to grant access.